Which is the best VPN provider in France? Which is the fastest VPN provider in France? We have done a big test of some of the most popular VPN providers on the market, and here you can see the results.
We will do quite a lot of VPN tests in the coming weeks and months, and now it is time to show you the results of our first big VPN test, checking which VPN provider has the fastest speeds in France. We have included nine different VPN providers in this test, and the selected VPN providers are.
- PureVPN
- ExpressVPN
- Cyberghost VPN
- Surfshark VPN
- IPVanish
- NordVPN
- StrongVPN
- PrivateVPN
- IvacyVPN
We have done a lot of speed testing lately, but we have never done a test like this in order to find out which VPN provider has the best speeds available on their servers in France. Some important information about the test itself before we reveal the details.
How did we find the fastest VPN in France?
- Many things can change from hour to hour, and therefore we decided to test the download speeds of all the selected VPN providers at three different times of the day (morning, lunchtime and in the evening).
- We summed up the download speed of the different tests and divided them with three, in order to find the VPN provider with the highest average speed.
- We connected to random servers in France with the different VPN providers. Most VPN application automatically connect to the server with best speeds (fewest active users), so we expect the servers chosen by the application itself to be the best suitable at the moment in that country.
A recording of the speed test
Would you like to see exactly how we did the test? You can check the full recording with the results announced in the end as you watch the following YouTube video.
The Speed Test results (in Mbps)
| VPN provider | Test 1 | Test 2 | Test 3 | Average speed |
| PureVPN | 108 | 28 | 198 | 111 |
| ExpressVPN | 195 | 159 | 80 | 145 |
| PrivateVPN | 187 (1) | 189 | 243 | 206 (BRONZE) |
| Surfshark VPN | 111 | 114 | 95 | 107 |
| StrongVPN | 239 | 287 | 175 | 234 (GOLD) |
| IPVanish | 140 | 194 | 298 | 211 (SILVER) |
| Ivacy VPN | 21 | 5 (2) | 217 | 81 |
| NordVPN | 37 | 35 | 128 | 67 |
| Cyberghost VPN | 93 | 138 | 74 | 102 |
- The first server we tested didn’t work, and therefore, we tried another server and used that in that and future tests.
- First thought the results was an error, and did one more test, only to get the same result again.
And the fastest VPN in France is…
The winner – StrongVPN
As you can see from the standing sheets above, StrongVPN is the winner of this test performed in February 2019. They have blazing speeds during all three tests, and even though IPVanish had the fastest speed recorded during the testing phase, StrongVPN still had the highest average download speed on their server in France.
StrongVPN might not be the biggest VPN provider on the market (they “only” have servers in 26 nations), but if they have a server in the nation you are interested in, it still looks good. They are very good at unblocking Netflix, in fact, they are one of the best VPNs for unblocking VPN on the market. They have a 30-day full refund policy, and you can use your subscription at 12 different devices at the same time.
Second place – IPVanish
It is quite interesting to notice that IPVanish ended up second. It came as a surprise to us because we didn’t expect them to be so fast at all. Our guess beforehand would be that they would end up among the slowest providers, but they proved us wrong. IPVanish gave us the highest download speed recorded during the speed test, a fantastic 298 Mbps download speed.
IPVanish is one of the VPN providers with the longest experience. They have servers in lots of nations (74 nations in total at the moment), and it is easy to select exactly the server you are looking for. They have a 7-day full refund policy, and you can use one IPVanish subscription at 10 different devices at the same time. They are proud of their zero-logging policy and their easy-to-use apps which are available for all the important platforms out there.
Third place – PrivateVPN
We didn’t have any opinion about how PrivateVPN would perform at all during this test beforehand, but the way it all ended, we have got to say that it was really impressing. They had stable high speeds, even though we had some trouble during the first round of the test as we weren’t able to connect to the server in France we first tried to connect to. But, as we changed that server to another, we got awesome speeds in all three rounds of testing.
PrivateVPN is a quite newcomer on the market, but they are taking the market with a storm. They already have servers in more than 50 nations, and they might be the VPN provider able to unblock the most Netflix regions of all out there at the moment. They have a 30-day full refund policy, and you can use your subscription at 6 devices at the same time. Just like StrongVPN and IPVanish, PrivateVPN support the 256-bit AES encryption.
One of the biggest surprises of the test
During our speed tests in the recent months, Ivacy VPN has proved to be a super fast provider. We, therefore, expected them to end up on the top of this list, or at least in the top three part of the list. But, during the first two rounds of testing we got the worst speeds recorded in this entire test with Ivacy VPN. Now, they got a hold of themselves before the last round where we got a download speed above 200 Mbps, but still – the first two rounds were really disappointing.
The fastest VPN in France – conclusion
There might be a big difference between the winner, StrongVPN, and NordVPN at the last place. But still, a few years ago, if anyone would have told me that there is a VPN provider that can give me average download speeds in France of 67 Mbps, I would have rejoiced and said that it sounds amazing. That is
In other words, StrongVPN might be the fastest, but all the VPN providers will do the job if you just want to stream content and surf securely online.
Is the fastest VPN provider always the best?
The fact that a VPN provider has blazing speeds, doesn’t mean that they have to be the best. It is all a question of what features you are looking for, it is a question of price, and it is also a question of unblocking. For example, if you want to stream French Netflix, it doesn’t matter if IPVanish came second in the test, because they will not help you unblock French Netflix. In other words, you will need to find the VPN that suits the need you have. But, which VPN providers can help you unblock French Netflix? As far as we know, ExpressVPN can help you, and so can Cyberghost VPN. Besides that, we do not know if any of the other VPN providers are capable of doing so.
Do your own research, find the VPN provider that suits you, but if you choose from the top of this list, you can be sure that you sign up for a VPN provider that will give you great speeds in France.
We cannot promise you the same speeds!
Before we say goodbye… we cannot promise you that you will get download speeds like the ones we got. First of all, it depends a lot on your active Internet connection. We did the test and our original download speeds (before using the VPN providers) were between 300 Mbps and 500 Mbps). If your initial download speed is only 50 Mbps, you will never be able to see speeds such as the ones described here.
We used the Speedtest desktop application, as we cannot measure so high speeds using the website. But, take a look at the video to see exactly how this worked out and how we did the test.
Please share your thoughts
If you have any thoughts or comments related to this test of the fastest VPN providers in France, please use the comment field beneath. We would love to hear about your experiences, and if you want to recommend some other VPN provider, use the comment field as well.
We will publish more national speed tests like this one in the future, and most likely, we will include even more VPN providers then. Follow us on Twitter and on Facebook and on YouTube, and stay up to date with what’s going on in the VPN world, and which are the best VPN providers at this very moment!
